Credit: Zac Popik / Lionsgate

A desire strong enough to make good judgment feel like a nuisance is the real drive behind this week’s Netflix-and-Chill picks, and you know exactly the type of trouble we’re talking about. A line crossed on purpose; guess lust does make some good arguments sometimes.

Heat is part of the bargain, of course, but heat on its own gets old too soon. What makes these stories fun is watching attraction start to fiddle with trust, because once someone gives in to temptation, keeping it all under control gets a lot harder.

Once that happens, forget about the existence of common sense, let alone morals. Talk about playing with fire, eh?

So when Desire Monster takes over, what you do is run straight to Netflix, and lucky you, as we have got some decent erotic picks for you this week.

Five steamy movies perfect for a ‘Netflix and Chill’ weekend

Miller’s Girl (Jade Bartlett, 2024)

Put an ambitious 18-year-old writer in the classroom of a frustrated novelist and let your wildest fantasies run free. Oh, and not just any actor; we’re talking about Jenna Ortega and Martin Freeman. Ortega plays Cairo Sweet, who lives alone in Tennessee while her wealthy parents remain abroad, and her lack of material for a Yale admissions essay leads her towards Jonathan Miller, an English teacher whose dormant literary ego gets quite the boost when he discovers she has read his book.

He gives Cairo a creative-writing assignment, and she comes back with something provocative enough to make their already questionable fascination impossible to brush aside. From there, the line between teacher and student starts evaporating.

Now, don’t expect Jade Halley Bartlett’s feature debut to hand you an easy villain and call it a day. Jenna Ortega makes Cairo so self-possessed that you swing between liking and hating her, while Martin Freeman gives Miller the vanity of a man who enjoys being admired until, well, there are consequences. Bartlett herself described the characters as morally “grey”, and that ambiguity is the hook: you are not watching a sweet Netflix romance but a power imbalance being tested.

Below Her Mouth (April Mullen, 2016)

Quite the title, you must think, but Below Her Mouth is not going to faff about pretending sex is merely the garnish… It is the main course, and director April Mullen knows it. Dallas, a roofer with zero interest in playing house, crosses paths with Jasmine, an engaged fashion editor whose life looks settled until attraction blows a hole through the middle of it.

One kiss becomes an affair, and before long you are watching two women throw caution out the window. This Netflix film is explicit and far more interested in female pleasure than in shy suggestion.

That is very important because Mullen made the film with an all-female crew and shaped the intimacy around a female gaze, so the eroticism does not feel like some man behind the camera having a field day. The plot is not reinventing the wheel, but let’s be honest: you are not here for anything else.

The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook, 2016)

Park Chan-wook is one of those few directors whom you can trust to make a con this filthy-minded and clever. Sook-hee, a pickpocket, enters Lady Hideko’s household as a maid because a swindler wants the heiress seduced into marriage so he can pocket her fortune, and for a while everything looks manageable, just like it always does when the disaster strikes. All that until Sook-hee starts wanting Hideko in ways that were definitely not in the plan initially.

Once Sook-hee and Hideko sleep together, the con is no longer “just a job” for Sook-hee because she is now helping deceive someone she has become attached to. That makes the sex scenes so much more than just erotic. Don’t worry, they are very explicit, yes, but they also change how you understand the relationship, because intimacy here is working closely with trust.

Bound (Jared Cohn, 2015)

Probably the first film in the list that goes straight for heat, and Charisma Carpenter’s Michelle is who you’ll be watching. She has the career and the house, but her sex life is, well, lifeless, so when Ryan, a man fifteen years younger, introduces her to BDSM, the temptation comes faster than wind. You can see why she goes along with it too. Who can resist that kind of intensity when everything in life is predictable?

For a while, that rush is the whole point. Michelle gets to explore a side of herself she has kept hidden, and Ryan knows how to make that feel exciting. Then things change, obviously because the film needs the twist, and the same dynamic that gave her a sense of freedom begins trapping her.

What starts as erotic experimentation becomes something more possessive, and by then Michelle has to work out how to take back control from a man who has a grip crazier than a baby’s fist.

The Boy Next Door (Rob Cohen, 2015)

Where Bound lets control grow out of an erotic arrangement, The Boy Next Door starts with something easier to rationalise. Claire, played by Jennifer Lopez, is still bruised by her husband’s affair when Noah, the 19-year-old neighbour, starts hovering around with the attention she has been missing. He is useful around the house and already close to her son, so when Claire gives in and sleeps with him, it’s an instant regret for ruining a pure bond.

And bite her; it does. Noah treats that one night as the beginning of something Claire never agreed to, and from there the heat turns into pressure. Ryan Guzman makes everything feel so creepy despite coming off as handsomely charming in the beginning. Compared to Bound, it is scarier because it was just a night’s mistake.